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by plaguedbynargles



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Horror, Minor Character Death, Nonbinary Character, Oh, Violence, Volturi, also one vamp dies, and me being unreasonably optimistic about the outcome of all this, humans die, it's the protagonist, uh, yeee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 12:57:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10514226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plaguedbynargles/pseuds/plaguedbynargles
Summary: The story of one unlikely human that strays from their tour group at Volterra.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This idea prevented me from working on my novel over break so I hope you all are happy.

               You are on a tour, and something is wrong.

               The group marches happily along, taking photos and attempting to get their Snapchats to connect; there isn’t any reception here, and it adds to the things currently making the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

               You don’t know, but you _think_ …you think you may not be overreacting. That thought is the most unsettling of all.

               Your tour guide, from the very beginning, unnerves you. You find yourself squinting, adjusting your glasses when she isn’t looking, and attempting to get a better look at her eyes. There is a strange muddiness to them. A hideous, murky brown that looks so unnatural, it almost appears plastic. But then, the guide herself looks a bit supernatural in her tight, white dress. There is something of condescension in her expression for the entirety of the tour. Maybe it’s because she’s wealthy. Maybe it’s because you’re from New York, where you learn very young not to trust anyone too friendly.

               Creepy guides happened, though. You could have dealt with that, on its own. From the very beginning, you had a sense that this would, at best, be a slightly disappointing tour. Most of the people you were surrounded with were either too young or too old for you to hold a conversation with, though you are more likely to take a chance on the balding man checking his pocketwatch—yes, his _pocketwatch_ —every free moment than the trio of American fraternity boys trying their luck with the guide.

               If your friends were here, they’d have teased you lightly, and you would have rolled your eyes; you’d dropped out of college after a semester, and were currently, to the disapproval of both your and their parents, living the life of a “starving artist”. Better that than the life of a frat boy. Or a sorority girl. They didn’t have rush for people like you.

               Starving artist, that is, until you’d stumbled upon the tickets. All inclusive trip to Austria, for three adults, left behind on a table in McDonald’s, unclaimed when you asked around. What better way to get inspired than to travel across the sea for the first time, your two best friends at your side, and ancient castles in the distance?

               It should have been the three of you, but then both of them caught the stomach flu. Initially, you’d thought you were the lucky one of the group. Now you hug yourself and shiver, frowning at the wall and wishing you had a second opinion from someone that _wasn’t_ a college drop out.

               Something inside of your stomach twists, and you lag behind the group a little more, staring intensely at the castle wall. Your heart is pounding like you are running, your ears already ringing, despite not having any reason to fear yet.

               You know. You _know_ that this isn’t Austrian architecture. You’d only taken one class, but the professor had been intense and you’d studied _hard._ This was absolutely _not_ Austrian architecture. Not from the period the guide had said it was from.

               You have half a mind to ask her to clarify, but she’d been…weird about questions. The information she’d given had never wavered in consistency, but the way she’d delivered any answer had reminded you, from the very beginning, of the trip to SeaWorld your family had taken when you were ten.

               _Dolphins are mammals, just like us!_

_That’s just the natural color of their skin, don’t worry!_

_SeaWorld puts the utmost care into the way we treat our animals!_

_Look at her! She WANTS to perform._

               And they eat it up. Like a school of fish, they all follow _her_ …Heidi had been her name, down the hallway. The glow of two dozen cell phones fades, and you are left in almost complete darkness.

               Half of you feels a kind of preliminary embarrassment. Surely, this is you overreacting. It’s your _anxiety_ wondering if the positive reviews for this tour were legitimate. It’s your _anxiety_ telling you the eyes of the men in that painting look red in this low light. Heidi will clomp back to you on her ridiculous heels and bring you back to the group, and everything you’d worried about will turn out to be nothing.

               You creep a bit closer to the painting on the wall. It isn’t in the large hallway you were supposed to be walking through, but just off to the side in a much narrower one, barely even in sight. Feeling naked, you light your phone and shine it on the three figures at the center of the frame, gazing down off a balcony into the chaos below.

               Their eyes are a faded scarlet.

(o0o0o0o0)

               _You resist the urge to roll your eyes at the stray, staying back from the group. That one had been difficult this whole time, always ready with another question. You don’t think it’s really worth going back for. Let it wander the castle until someone else stumbles upon it and takes care of it. Nothing had been very appealing about the greasy hair or the stale clothing, anyway, so Aro or Caius weren’t likely to get upset about Felix or Demetri stumbling upon it as a midnight snack._

_Felix had always thought the stragglers were fun. Once, a small one had found its way into Jane’s personal chambers, of all things. It’d been found playing with one hundred year old dolls Jane had locked away in an old chest. Demetri would never tell you whether or not it was true that they’d played dolls for an hour together before Jane had killed it._

_You have a sense of déjà vu as you throw the doors open. The coven has been eating perhaps more often than is necessary, lately, but then, you can’t help that humans are such easy prey, can you?_

(o0o0o0o0)

               You follow the group from a ways back, praying silently that you’ve been effectively forgotten. You jump when massive doors at the end of the hallway are thrown open, flooding it with light that just barely misses you, stopping short a few feet in front of you. Halfheartedly, you flatten yourself to the wall, staring at your feet as they file in.

               You should stop being stupid, and just join them. You take a restrained breath of air, some primal instinct telling you to make sure it’s silent, and prepare to push yourself off the wall to follow them.

               Just as you do so, they shut the doors with a heavy creak that seems to vibrate in your bones, plunging you into almost complete darkness. Your heartbeat is thrumming in your ears, anxiety running haywire at the thought of being left for dead in this castle…basement? Surely, you’re underground right now.

There is a tremor in your hands, and it does not cease until you hear the first scream. When that happens, every muscle in your body goes absolutely still. You do not breathe, you do not flinch, and you do not blink, because what you just heard was real.

               Sometimes, during the summer, you would hear what you thought was a real scream. Children would be playing outside by sunset, and someone would get a little too excited by the game, resulting in not a playful, but a more frightened scream. Uniformly, every adult in the neighborhood would lift their heads, pausing in what they were doing to listen and discern if someone really needed help, before determining that things like that didn’t happen in _their_ neighborhood, and breathing easily again.

               Things like that _didn’t_ happen in your neighborhood. You could never have imagined the primal, desperate sound of the scream you just heard.

               It all happens very fast, after that. You hear a series of muffled thuds against the doors, followed by a terrible, ear wrenching scraping, and more screaming. The frat boys, the old man with his pocket watch…they are all _begging_ , incoherent words that garble together into one, uniform cry, and that scraping sound is growing louder, more desperate.

               Every hair on your body stands up suddenly. Even on your head, they bristle.

               _Fingernails._

               You bolt. It is a living nightmare. Your every step seems to echo off the walls, giving away your position to anyone that might wish to follow you, but if you move quietly, your movement is painfully slow. You don’t know where you are running, or what you’re running _from_ , only that you need to move faster.

               Finally, you reach the narrow hallway with the painting, and you practically leap into it, taking a moment to catch your breath. Your vision darkens a bit at the edges, and for a brief, horrifying moment, you think you are going to pass out. Your ears are ringing, but somehow, you can hear everything; the quiet frustrates you. Quiet means you don’t know who is around.

               There are three possibilities you deem dubiously plausible:

  1. Heaven’s Gate 2.0
  2. Human Trafficking
  3. Government Conspiracy



               The red eyed men in their portrait look down their noses at you. Somehow, you think it could be a mixture of all three possibilities. You know, in a sudden moment of calm, that you will die if you stay here.

               You have yet to sell a single painting. The thought is strangely infuriating. All the hours of practice, of fighting for your right to drop out of art school and become your own, independent artist, and here you are, about to die completely unknown, unrecognized. Your passion will live on without you.

               That anger, no, _fury_ , clears your head. It sharpens your vision and calms the tremor in your hands. You _will_ get out of here alive. You are smart enough to do it. You will catch a flight home and continue to paint and paint and paint. You are an artist, and you will not die.

(o0o0o0o0)

               _Caius grabs one by the hair and jerks its head straight back, snapping its spine in half with a crack and stretching the skin on its neck taut before lunging in._

_Aro takes one of the frat boys; he enjoys the younger, hot blooded ones the most._

_Marcus’s facial expression does not change as he slowly, apathetically makes his way to pocket watch man, clutching the aforementioned item as though it is something sacred._

_They did, in fact, just eat a few days ago. The feedings are getting closer together, but it’s something to do, and they’re all growing terribly bored as of late. The one still in the castle is the last thing on Heidi’s mind as she gorges herself on blood, her full stomach starting to ache._

(o0o0o0o0)

               You need to get above ground, if you are going to get out. Therefore, you need to go up. You jog down the hallway with the hideous painting, absurdly terrified that your heartbeat is louder than your footsteps, echoing off the walls and giving your position away.

               You will get out you will get out you will get out.

               Finally, you reach a crossroads. Left or right. You head right, the direction you thought went farthest away from the…room they were led to, but it heads straight to a stygian, downward staircase, the bottom of which you cannot see.

               Right. No to the dungeon torture chamber, and yes to the other way. You pray this one leads up.

               It doesn’t, but it doesn’t go down, either. You start running again, following the hallway on and on, past endless doors and endless portraits, both of which unnerve you in equal amounts. You feel like you’re lost in a dream, like a monster is just around the corner behind you, and no matter how fast you run, it can merely stroll, and still catch you.

(o0o0o0o0)

               _The carnage is magnificent._

_Lifeless, bloodless bodies are strewn across the floor like rag dolls. There is no blood…as usual, not a drop went anywhere other than the mouths of the vampires, but it is still a mess they can shake their heads at. Demetri frowns at the tears and snot that have soaked into his robes. So inconveniently messy, humans are._

_Aro mumbles to Caius about how almost all of them died while clutching their cell phones. They are, Caius drawls, a modern crucifix._

_They glance at poor pocket watch man, lying limp while still holding the precious watch. He is the sole exception to the rule. A chuckle is shared. Or, rather, a chuckle is offered by Aro. Caius sneers and shakes his head._

_“There’s a treat wandering the castle for you,” Heidi purrs in Felix’s ear._

_Unfortunately, Caius also hears this, and stomps over._

_“You let one get away?”_

_Heidi straightens, “I-”_

_Caius snaps something archaic and derogatory that sufficiently shuts her up._

_Felix speaks up, “It’s in good fun. She meant well. And of course it won’t escape.”_

_The ancient growls deep in his throat, “You. Don’t. Know. That.”_

_A tiny throat is cleared, “Could I have it?”_

_Caius turns to his wife, Athenodora, who has joined them._

_“Most of mine were older today,” she continues, big eyes pleading._

_“Well?” Caius raises an expectant eyebrow at Felix and Heidi, who properly nod and “of course”._

_“It wasn’t a very good one,” Heidi explains, “That’s why I thought it would be fine to save for a snack-”_

_“We_ eat _,” Caius says, “at_ meal times _, Heidi.”_

_And with that, the ancient vampire stalks away, while his even older wife sets off for the rest of the castle to claim her prize._

(o0o0o0o0)

               You need a weapon. And some stairs.  You aren’t brave enough to try opening any of these doors for either of them. There is a stabbing pain in your side—you are a painter, not a marathon runner—yet you curse your body for betraying you in this way, regardless of your own involvement in setting up its failure.

               It is completely silent, save for your breathing and footsteps, and this does nothing to help your paranoia. You feel as though any second, something or someone will jump out at you and drag you back to whatever fate befell the others.

               As the hallways grow darker and cooler around you, hopelessness sets in.

               You continue to jog, only because if you don’t, you will sink to the floor and weep, immobilized by terror. It is all you want to do; you can barely see at all, but enough is visible for you to know that the architecture has changed from merely old to…ancient. You must be in a very aged part of the castle…if you even are in a castle. The thought chills you. You have no idea where in the world you are; everything Heidi had said could have been a lie.

               Strangely, anger is what keeps you from giving up. Heidi, that other receptionist you’d walked past on the way down, and God knows who else…did this _to you_. It isn’t fair. It is mind-blowing, outrageous, even, that another person could have so little empathy for _life._ Those frat boys had _grandmothers_ , that man with the watch could have had a collection of clocks that he loved. And now? Unless you had gone completely insane, they were all dead. They were _bodies_ , now, nothing more.

               You haven’t sold _one_ painting yet, and Heidi in her fucking heels was going to try to take that from you. Fuck Heidi, and fuck her smugness, and fuck Austria—

               You freeze, every muscle in your body tense.

               You can’t hear anything _now_ , but you swear…you swear you heard movement.

               Ordinarily, you would have started sprinting, but then, directly in front of you, a staircase seems to materialize out of the darkness. It is old, and structurally questionable, but it goes up, and that is all you need to lunge towards it, taking the steps two at a time.

(o0o0o0o0)

               _Athenodora strolls down the main corridor, lingering by the painting of the masters, just off to the side. The human had lingered here too, it would seem, but it was difficult to tell. Her sense of smell is not as good as it once was; sitting in a tower for thousands of years, unexposed to new scents, can have that effect._

_It is easy to smell the human’s fear. She takes her time following it; savors the hunt. It has been a long time since she hasn’t had her food brought to her, as hunting is a disturbance, and disturbances will not do._

(o0o0o0o0)

               Your lungs are _burning_ by the time you get to the top of the staircase, but you climbed for long enough that you think you are above ground at this point.

               There is a single hallway at the top of the staircase, filled with large, ornate doors…most of which are open or slightly ajar. You sprint to the first one you see, throwing it open all the way and barely stopping to notice that it is a large, ornate bedroom before you go straight to the window.

               There is some kind of ornate metalwork over it, making it possible to open the glass to get a breeze, but impossible to step outside. Besides that, you are very, very high up.

               Your heartbeat picks up. What if you can’t get down? The thought of going back the way you came is horrifying.

               _Find a weapon, find a weapon, find a weapon_.

               For the first time, you give the bedroom you are in a good look. It doesn’t look very lived in, save for a single piece of writing, done with a quill and inkpot, sitting on a large, wooden desk. The walls are practically lined with dusty, ancient looking books; it’s like a mini library. There are many gold tones and light, warm colors, giving the room a rather royal appearance.

               You couldn’t care less if it was the room of a king; all you want is a weapon and a way out. Hastily, you grab the only other thing that shows the room is lived in at all: a heavy, deep red scarf that is draped over the back of the desk chair. It is easily the brightest colored thing in the room.

               Worst case scenario, you could light it on fire or strangle someone with it, but it could easily be used against you. Your current best asset, you think, is your lighter, which is, as always, in your pocket. You have always rolled your eyes at yourself whenever it finds its way there; you finally quit smoking half a year ago, but out of habit still grab the useless thing whenever you leave the house. Consequently, it is just a weight in your pocket the rest of the day. On a normal airplane, it would have been even _more_ of a nuisance than usual, during security checks. But the plane you’d taken here hadn’t been normal, and, today, the lighter was far more valuable than normal, as well.

               You throw open drawers in the desk, finding numerous stationaries and different kinds of pens, quills, and ink, before giving up to search elsewhere. It looks, then, like you won’t be finding a gun, today. There are historical looking swords and other weapons spread out around the room, but they are all on displays of a sort, and look more ornamental than anything else. Besides; you can’t reasonably kill someone with a _sword_ when you barely survived the FitnessGram Pacer Test in high school.

               You run to the bathroom, and, after a painful moment of searching through drawers, find not a razor or scissors, but a single can of hairspray. Your lighter and the scarf in one hand, and the hairspray in the other, you dash out of the golden room and into the deep burgundy one across the hallway, only to find that there are also bars on the window. Frustrated, you wrap your fingers around these and give them a sharp yank, rattling them furiously and hating how you remind yourself of those that died behind the doors, earlier.

               “Please, please, please,” you chant like it’s a prayer, running to the last door in the hallway, “Please, please, please.”

               By the grace of some God, monster, or other entity, there is no metalwork on this window. Heart soaring with hope, you undo the latch and are just about to throw it open when the most beautiful voice you have ever heard speaks behind you.

               “My husband will not appreciate you looking through our things.”

(o0o0o0o0)

               _Caius’s scarf is in its hand, looking ridiculously out of place._

_The thing is sweating like a pig, and panting like a bitch in heat. It doesn’t belong here. It looks ridiculous in the bedchamber of a god, in this castle of immortals._

_Athenodora starts to approach, not stopping when it shoves open the window behind it, the wind wafting the scents of sweat, fear, and intoxicating, delicious blood towards her._

_“Back the fuck off, how ‘bout?”_

_It is loud, but she could hear its voice shaking, couldn’t miss that its grey eyes were fixated on her bright red ones._

_“I said_ back the fuck off.”

               _It drops Caius’s scarf and flicks open a lighter that Athenodora didn’t see, lifting a can of hairspray behind it. She stops in her tracks; even from this distance, she can read the microscopic warning on the label: Do Not Expose to Flame._

(o0o0o0o0)

               Your heart nearly stops when you see her eyes. It was unnerving seeing such eyes in a painting, but mere feet away from you, in the flesh, they are all the more vibrant and alien. Half of your brain is entranced, as though in a dream, ready to simply give yourself up to the monster. The other half, the painter’s half, grits its teeth and prepares to squeeze the nozzle on the hairspray can.

               “You know that won’t do a damn thing, right?” the woman, monster, goddess, cult worshiper, _whatever_ trills the threat beautifully. It is a lie that sounds like truth, but you see how her eyes watch the flame on your lighter flicker in the wind.

               Logically, you would have expected her to say something like “I’m calling the police”, or “Don’t worry, I mean you no harm.” But she doesn’t. There is no need for her to sugar coat what is really happening.

               Something primal inside of you causes your stomach to twist at the thought of food.

               “You killed them,” your hand holding the can shakes, “You killed that entire group. What the _fuck_ is this?”

               She shakes her head, her long, white-blonde curls moving with her head like something out of a Disney movie, the wind toying with a few strands.

               “This would have been so much simpler for you if you’d just stayed with them.”

               “And _died?_ ” your voice cracks with hysteria. It is taking active focus not to squeeze the trigger on the can.

               “Human lives are short, anyway,” she shrugs. Several things dawn on you, then. The first is that the world is much larger than you had once thought it was, and the second is that she is _enjoying_ this.

               Your anger brings a rush of blood to your cheeks.

               “Oh,” she laments, “I can _taste_ your anger. We almost never get angry ones.”

               You think of the screaming, the fingernails on the door, and you believe that.

               “It’s because,” you snarl, “they don’t get a chance to be angry.”

               She raises her eyebrows.

               “But I’m honored,” you continue, “to be your first.”

               “Let us see how much it helps you.”

               If you had sprayed after she leapt, you would have been too late. However, milliseconds before she moved, your anger finally got the best of you, the tremor in your hands causing you to squeeze the trigger on the hairspray can, creating a small spout of flame just in time for her to close the distance between you, and jump straight into it.

               She catches like a drop of gasoline, crashing to the floor like some great monument, her scream nothing like those you heard earlier that day. It is demonic…animalistic, like something you would hear in Hell. It is less a scream of death than it is of unfathomable pain.

               You glance out the window and see what you were hoping to see. Picking up the scarf, you step out onto the window ledge and into the sun, your lighter in your pocket and the hairspray in your other hand.

               Behind you, someone screams for Athena.

(o0o0o0o0)

               _Caius hears his wife’s scream, and he is at her side in no more than a second. She is in Marcus’s room, and she is writhing on the ground, her entire body aflame._

_He doesn’t hear himself scream her name, but it happens. He is vaguely aware of Sulpicia at his side, flinching to hear such an emotional outburst from him._

_It is too late. They are both ashamed of how they stand several feet back to watch the flames until they reduce Athenodora down to nothing, for fear of suffering the same fate themselves. Snarling, Caius and Sulpicia dash to the window, but freeze just out of range of the sun._

_The human has carefully climbed down…has_ stolen _Caius’s scarf, and is standing on lower ledge, positioned by a local’s laundry line._

_Where...are Aro and Demetri?_

_Demetri is downstairs, flirting with Felix and Heidi, and Aro is minding his own business, waiting to play his hand, to find a way that he can utilize this incident to further Caius’s loyalty, as he did with Marcus._

_Somehow, Caius thinks this is Aro’s fault, no, his_ intention. _Somehow, Caius thinks that Aro has found a way to profit off of their sloth, their gluttony. What brings them damnation will bring him glory._

_He will risk not only the sanctity of the Volturi, but the entire vampire world to get what he wants._

_Fuming, half of a mind to throw Sulpicia out into the sunlight and make it even, Caius is forced to watch the human escape, using the scarf of a vampire king to sail away to freedom._

_If it hadn’t taken his Athena from him, if he weren’t heartbroken, furious, and betrayed, he would perhaps have felt a twinge of respect for the brave little thing._

(o0o0o0o0)

               Every Indiana Jones movie you have ever watched has prepared you for this moment. You take the monster’s scarf and throw it around the laundry line, testing your weight on it once before saying a quick prayer and taking the leap of faith.

               There are eyes on your back as you sail away, someone’s shirts and bras and dresses hitting you in the face as you fly, but the sun is warm on your skin, and you have a lighter in your pocket, and suddenly, being alone and lost in an unknown country is the smallest problem in the world. You are an unknown painter, and things can only go up from here.

               You crash into the side of a building before falling through not one, not two, but three fabric awnings, and then crash land with a splash of juice in a fruit stand. You could laugh, actually laugh, but before you do, you make eye contact with another red eyed, snowy haired monster watching you from the window.

               You feel lethal, you feel alive, and you grin at it, taking a bow before scampering off to find the nearest airport, tossing the hairspray away and, after a moment’s consideration, taking the scarf with you. You think this will make a hell of a painting.

(o0o0o0o0)

               _Caius is shocked when the human does not flinch, does not look away, but instead insolently takes a bow before fleeing, taking his scarf with it._

_He tells himself he will track it down eventually, but all he has to go on is its face, as his nostrils can currently smell nothing more than his wife’s ashes. The smell travels to the back of his throat and coats his tongue, rendering his sense of smell useless and making him wonder a bit less how Marcus could become so numb. Accursed love._

_Caius decides, after taking some time to fume over it, that, in this case, enablers of a crime are just as guilty as the criminals themselves. And there are many, many enablers he would like to speak with._

 

**Author's Note:**

> What's that? You think I'm TOO OPTIMISTIC? You think that there's no way any human could survive a vampire encounter?
> 
> Listen up, chums. There must be SOME REASON why the Volturi are soooo stuck up about secrecy. If humans posed no threat at all, why care? Just take the Romanian route and rule everything, ya?
> 
> Also...I just want ONE to get away. Just one. Just one to make those ancients scratch their heads and think "well shit...humans AREN'T all just walking bloodbags, after all!"
> 
> Anyway yes rant over thank you all for reading ^ __ ^


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